Few prisoners wore chains in their cells, only those that the king particularly disliked: counts or dukes or the minister of the exchequer when he told the king there wasn't any more money to spend. The large iron ring around my waist had grown loose, but not loose enough to fit over the bones of my hips. I was thinner than I had been when I was first arrested. I reviewed over and over the plans that had seemed so straightforward before I arrived in jail, and I swore to myself and every god I knew that if I got out alive, I would never never never take any risks that were so abysmally stupid again. To pass the time, I concentrated on pleasant memories, laying them out in order and examining them carefully.
In the evening, as the sunlight faded, I reassured myself that I was one day closer to getting out. Every morning the light in the cell changed from the wavering orange of the lamp in the sconce outside my door to the dim but even glow of the sun falling into the prison's central courtyard. The days were all the same, except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before. I didn't know how long I had been in the king's prison.
See all of librarian Nancy Pearl's Sci-Fi and fantasy picks.
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